BIO: Winner of the 2003 Main Street Rag Chapbook contest, Karla Huston earned an MA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. She is the winner of many awards and residencies and has published poetry, reviews and interviews in many regional and national journals including Cimarron Review, 5 A.M., Margie, North American Review, Pearl, Poet Lore, Rattle, and others. A former board member for the Fox Valley Writing Project and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, including An Inventory of Lost Things (Centennial Press, 2009).

About Huston's chapbook Flight Patterns, poet Denise Duhamel says:

"Karla Huston has a knack for the perfect-pitched narrative, the delicious revelation of a storyline in verse. In Flight Patterns, the heartbreak of mature and adolescent love, domestic dramas, and issues of the body stun the reader with both their universality and their particular passions. Huston wrestles with all the "what ifs," and her poems put life in a headlock at every turn. A vividly luscious debut. "

About Huston's writing, Laurel Mills, poet and novelist, says: “Karla Huston is one of the best poets writing in the state of Wisconsin today.”

PUBLICATIONS:
An Inventory of Lost Things, Centennial Press, 2009
Catch and Release, Marsh River Editions, 2005
marshrivereditions
Virgins on the Rocks, Parallel Press, 2004
parallelpress.library. wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry
Flight Patterns, Mainstreet Rag Press, 2003
mainstreetrag.com
Pencil Test, Cassandra Press, 2002 (out of print)
A Halo of Watchful Eyes, Wolf Angel Press, 1997 (out of print)

These books can also be obtained from karlahuston.com
POEMS
THEORY OF SALT

A tense bond of elements
like a marriage, more soluble
in hot than cold water. Some say
panic is made of it, the hollow

of an armpit bathed in brine,
a pocket of sweat and terror:
God's wrath became an ochre post,
while Lot's wife blazed.

Or Morton's cobalt canister,
made famous by an umbrella,
held by a little girl—her yellow dress
tilted under a reign

of salt that spins a tumult behind her.
Some say salt perks up coffee,
soothes sore throats, cleans vases and pots.
It removes red wine stains, protects

pantyhose, eats fish odors, and cuts rust.
And how do we live without it,
our bodies forever craving a sprinkle of the sea?
Even salary comes from the word—

crystal cakes exchanged as money.
Still I wonder how we come to
know it, savor its elemental
fault, the sweet fury of desire,

the measure of a life in a handful
of cinder and bone. How do we
see clearly through
the oceans in our eyes?

—Karla Huston

Former versions of this poem have been published in Fox Cry Review, One Trick Pony, Flight Patterns, and Pencil Test.